News at Ten goes five-nights-a-week

ITV is to resurrect News at Ten to a five-nights-a-week offering from next month, anchoring the late bulletin in that slot on Friday nights.

The programme currently airs at 10pm four nights a week between Monday and Thursday, with its Friday show broadcast at 11pm in order for ITV1 to screen more entertainment programming.

However, ITV has now decided to move its Friday bulletin to 10pm from 9 March in order to give its flagship bulletin a "consistent home at the heart of the schedule". The last time News at Ten was on five nights a week was a decade ago.

The broadcaster said the move was also because the new on-screen pairing of Julie Etchingham and Mark Austin – who replaced veteran presenter Sir Trevor McDonald in November – had "worked well". It added that ratings for the ITV1 late bulletin had also improved.

Michael Jermey, ITV's new director of news, current affairs and sport, said: "We're delighted that News at Ten will now run five nights a week on ITV1. It's a vote of confidence in the programme, which has performed well this year with strong journalism on all the major stories."

David Mannion, editor-in-chief of ITV News, added: "We are extremely pleased with the performance of News at Ten. The programme's journalism and production values are of a consistently high quality. We very much welcome the decision to extend it to five nights a week."

ITV said ratings for News at Ten had increased by an average of 300,000 viewers a night in the past three months to 2.5 million, up from 2.2 million between January and November last year. Audience share had also increased from 11% to almost 13% over the same period.

However, BBC1's 10pm news bulletin still outguns its ITV1 rival, pulling in about 5 million viewers.

ITV executives have said they are at ease with the BBC's victory at 10pm, saying it is more of a big deal for the corporation than it is for ITV.

The commercial broadcaster's late bulletin has long suffered from the tag of "news at when" after successive changes to its scheduling.

News at Ten, which launched in 1967, aired at 10pm until March 1999, when its scheduling became variable so the broadcaster could air movies and long-form drama uninterrupted.

The following year ITV shifted its late bulletin to 11pm, at which point the BBC immediately took advantage of the change, moving its flagship bulletin from 9pm to 10pm.

ITV originally restored the late bulletin to 10pm in March 2001 for an average of three days a week, before shunting it back to 10.30pm in January 2004.

News at Ten was resurrected in its traditional 10pm slot – with McDonald back at the helm for the first 10 months – for four days a week in January last year.

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